The Gender Game
by SupremeMasterOverlordKhurro
Summary: Feminists is a hard word to define. Most people believe it's someone who wants equality for woman. But like in every group, there are extremists. They're disturbed minds corrupted the definition of feminist, changing the meaning and believing that women should be superior to all men. Now, a member of the team is their target, and hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own the characters.

I am not responsible for future attacks of the feels.

I apologize in advance for how OOC the characters will be at times. I normally don't write fanfictions for TV shows.

"There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither works." ~ Will Rogers

The call came in early in the morning, well before sunrise. Groggy voices came over the phone line, some not quite seeming like they even realized they had answered the phone. But as always, everyone came in. Reid and Morgan came in last, arguing about the importance of knowing world wide current events. Once they sat down, the briefing began.

"Three men found in Kansas, all with horrible, horrible things done to them." Garcia began, turning on the projector to reveal rather gory pictures of bloody men. "They all had their man parts crudely removed, and the most disturbing thing is on the most recent victim, Thomas Smith, they found that someone had planted a single ovary inside of them, but from the looks of it, he died before they finishing attaching it.

"Well thats new." Rossi stated. "Feminist?"

"Thats what they think, but hold your horses, there's more." Garcia nodded, and pressed the button on her remote. More pictures came up of men with various scars and wounds. Some had make-up on, others were dressed up in high heals that were too big, some had what looked like badly done breast implants, and the ones that were clothed had on dresses with stockings and jewelry. "There have been several similar cases all over the country."

"What connects them?" Morgan asked. "It could be different unsubs in each place."

"They're branded." She said, and a picture came up of the brand: A thorny rose

"Every rose has it's thorns." J.J. sighed. "So this is probably a feminist who wants men to feel the way women do."

"Or wants men to be annihilated altogether." Reid added. "Those are pretty violent attacks made to cause as much pain as possible. Like the unsub is punishing their victims for being male."

"Well you all know the drill. Wheels up in thirty." Hotch said, pushing himself to his feet. Closing their iPads (plus Reid's paper copy), the team got up and went to go get their go bags.

"Not long after, they were all on the plane on their way to Kansas.

"Have we ever had a case like this before?" Kate asked./

"Case like what? The unsub removing the genitals or an extremist?" Reid answered, flipping through the file again.

"A case involving a feminist."

"Not really." He shook his head. "Most feminists seem to stick to the less-violent ways of getting their points across." He made a face as he looked at some of the pictures. "There's a lot of overkill on the recent victims. Even their faces are cut up. Cops found part of the nose on the other side of the ally where the body was dumped, and their eye brows had been waxed off and drawn back on."

"Not all women have small noses and drawn on eyebrows." JJ pointed out. "Maybe she's trying to get them to all look like her or some other woman in her life?"

"We don't even know if the unsub is a woman." Morgan argued. "It could be a man who maybe wants other men to feel emasculated."

"But to go that far?" Kate questioned. "That's a lot of anger."

"Maybe these men had bullied the unsub and made him feel emasculate."

"Then why would they be killing men all over the country?"

"Good point."

"If they're going all over the country, then there should be a paper trail somewhere. Someone have Garcia check for it, if they used the same credit card, it would be easy to find." Rossi said.

"And we should have her do background checks on the victims. See if they have anything in common." Hotch agreed.

By the time they landed, they knew the backgrounds of the victims. All the men had been alpha males, and in some way or another, they had all wronged a woman, whether it be in abusive relationships, cheating on their girlfriends or wives, or taking advantage of them in some way. However, Garcia had yet to find a paper trail.

"Maybe it's like a cult. A group of extreme feminists from all over the country who are all working together for this." Reid suggested.

Feminazis." JJ said.

"Feminazi? Whats that?" Reid asked.

"Think about it, Genius. What does it sound like?" Morgan said.

"Reid was quiet for a few minutes. "Feminist and Nazis?"

"Good job."

"Never heard those terms combined like that before."

"You also didn't know was 'lol' and 'bff' were until I explained it." JJ pointed out.

By the end of the day, the team hadn't learned very much about their unsubs. There was no paper trail, no evidence to point in any direction, and no possibly suspects yet. By nine pm, it seemed as though the only thing keeping the team awake was the excessive amount of coffee they were drinking, and even that was barely seeming to work.

"Alright, that's enough for tonight. Everyone head to hotel and try to get some rest. We'll pick this up again in the morning." Hotch finally said. Relieved, everyone packed their things and went out to the cars.

* * *

Unknown POV

"See the one there, with the longer hair and the messenger bag?" A woman asked, sounding as if she had been smoking for several years.

"Yes. You think he's the best one for this?" Another voice answered.

"I don't think, I know. He's not like the other men. He has a gentle hand, he hasn't lifted a single finger against a woman. Hasn't even really touched one. He's the perfect one to test our theories on."


	2. Chapter 2

**Again, I do not own the characters, except maybe the unsubs.**

 **I apologize for the feels in advance. But I'm really not sorry.**

Reid didn't take long to fall asleep that night. Even with the haunting images from the case today, he was out almost as soon as he leaned back on the bed. He had planned on maybe reading a little bit or going over the case again to see if he had missed anything, but his body had other plans. The case file was still in his hand, open to show the bloody images of the victims. The ancient Greek epic poem, The Iliad, was sitting on his other side. No one on the team were heavy sleepers, but if anyone is tired enough, they can sleep through anything. That's why he didn't hear the hotel door open or the sounds of two people dressed as janitors coming in right away. It wasn't until he realized he couldn't breath that he actually woke up, and his eyes widened.

A hand was holding a rag over his nose and mouth, and he could only guess what it was soaked in. Knowing there wouldn't be much time before he would pass out, he tried to squirm away, but a second person held a knife to his throat. The last thought going through his head was ' _here we go again...'_

The next morning, the rest of the team met in the lobby. They were waiting for Reid to come down so they could get back to the station and hopefully get some useful information today.

"Whats he doing up there? You told him seven, right?" Kate asked, looking at Hotch.

"Yes, I did. And he answered with 'okay', so he should be awake." Hotch glanced back at the text conversation on his phone, double checking that Reid had answered.

"He's never been this late before. It's seven thirty, we need to get moving." Morgan said, checking his watch.

"Someone go check on him." Rossi said, sitting on one of the couched with a cup of coffee. As always, he seemed totally relaxed.

"I'll go." JJ offered, and headed back to the elevator. After getting off the elevator she walked down the hall to the room next to hers, which was where Reid was supposed to be staying. She knocked on the door, but there was answer. She tried to call, but it went straight to voice mail. Putting her ear to the door, she listened for the shower, but it was silent. The sink wasn't running, the shower was running, and the TV wasn't on. Had he maybe fall asleep again? Even if he did, he wouldn't sleep through someone knocking on the door.

"Spence?" She called, but again, no answer. Something wasn't right. She sent a text to the team.

 _He isn't answering and there's no sound behind the door. I think somethings wrong._

The team was up by the room in handful of minutes, with an extra key from the front desk. Morgan tried knocking again and calling Reid's name, but they got no answer whatsoever. Call it paranoid or prepared, the rest of the team pulled the guns from their belts as Morgan used the key and opened the door. Moving in as if they were going into an unsubs house, they spread out, guns ready. There wasn't much to really go, just a bathroom, a closet, and the main room. There was no sign of Reid anywhere, but all his stuff was still there.

On the bed was the file, but it was neatly closed with just a picture of the first victim sitting on top of it. Next to that was the Iliad, and his messenger bag was on the floor next to the bed. The team looked around for his phone, but it was no where to be found. When they saw the window the fire escape was wide open, they all got that dreadful feeling.

"Can anyone think of any reason he would go through the fire escape on his own? With just his phone?" Kate asked, hoping that he had just gone off to go see something.

"No." Morgan shook his head.

"This was the only picture from the file out. Could the unsub have actually gotten in taken him?" Rossi looked at the others. "The doors lock automatically. The window only opens from the inside, and there is no sign of forced entry. Whoever took him walked right through the door to get in. Either he had reason to believe he was safe, or they managed to sneak in while he was sleeping."

"So it could be someone who works here." Morgan realized. "Is there a security camera near his door?"

While Kate, JJ, and Rossi continued to look for anything that could tell them where Reid was, Morgan and Hotch went to look for a camera. To their relief, there was a camera right across the hall. The two men went back down to the lobby and walked up to the front desk.

"One of our agents has gone missing. Can we see security tapes from last night?" Hotch said, showing his FBI badge.

"Of course." The woman said, and lead them to the back. They stood on either side of her while she pulled the video feed from the camera outside Reid's room. It showed two women dressed in the same uniforms as the janitors of the hotel. They didn't show their faces to the camera, but pulled a key and opened the door, slipping into the room as if they were just going in to take inventory of the toilet paper.

"Fast forward. We need to see if those two women come back out." Morgan instructed. The woman fast forwarded, up to 6am, but no one came back out of the room.

"Who were those two?" Hotch asked her.

"I don't know. I don't recognize them and the badges aren't visible." She said.

"Do other employees normally go into the guests rooms while they're there?"

"No, not unless they ordered room service, and they would've brought food up if your agent ordered room service."

"We need a copy of this video." Hotch said. The woman nodded and got to work on making them a copy. Once she finished, she handed the disk to them and they Morgan called JJ.

"Grab his stuff and come back down. We have the video and we're going to bring it back to the station." He said.

A few minutes later Hotch, JJ, and Morgan were in one car while Kate and Rossi were in the other.

"Why is it always Reid?" Morgan questioned out loud, clearly stressing already.

"Because he's the most submissive." Hotch pointed out. "He's the least likely to fight back physically."

Morgan sighed and shook his head. Reid was like a baby brother to him. To the whole team! He didn't deserve this, not at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**I normally wont reply to reviews in a chapter until the very end of a story. But someone left a review saying that I must be a male because the unsub's actions seemed more like a transvestite and not a feminist. Well, I'm not a male. And I never specified to anyone if the unsub is a feminist or a transvestite or a guy who was bullied and doesn't like alpha males. The team** _ **suspects**_ **extreme feminists. That doesn't mean it's absolutely right.**

Dr. Reid woke up to a raging headache and a lot of confusion. He groaned and didn't want to open his eyes to face whatever it was that awaited him as he remembered the events of last night. Two people had broken into his room, knocked him out, and must've kidnapped him because this was not the same bed he had been in when they first broke in. This one was a lot harder and the pillows much flatter.

"He's waking up." A strange voice said. It sounded...fake? It was hard to tell if it was male or female.

"Good. I was worried we may have killed him already." The voice that answered was definitely female, and sounded like it came from a slightly older woman. Maybe the same age as his mother?

"So when can we start? What are we doing first?" The first voice sounded excited, like a child at Christmas.

"Talk to him. What makes him so different from other males?"

Spencer could hear foot steps as someone, probably the second voice, came closer. With each passing minute, he was becoming more aware of his surroundings. For one, he was tied spread eagle on what appeared to be a cheap, thin mattress. The second thing he noticed was someone had completely stripped him naked. Last time that happened, he had been in high school and tied to a goal post for several hours for everyone to laugh at. The temperature was a comfortable one, not too hot but not too cold. The room smelled like a mix of perfume, cleaning chemicals, and...and something else. He couldn't really put his finger on it.

"Open your eyes, boy. I know you have questions." The second voice said. Seeing as there really was no other choice at the moment, Spencer decided that playing along would be his best option for now. Pretend to be interested in whatever fantasy the unsubs had, try to seem helpful in some way. Stay alive. So he blinked open his eyes, squinting in the harsh light. The light definitely didn't help his head ache.

"Where am I?" He croaked out, voice hoarse.

"That's not that important. It'll change often, but for now lets just say you're in bed." The woman answered. She had well groomed, short, curly brown hair, not a single speck of gray. Despite the pretty shade of green that her eyes were, they were cold and looking at him as if he was worthless trash. There wasn't much to say about her face besides plastic surgery. And a lot of it.

"Who are you?" He tried instead. He tried to lift his head to see the other person who he could tell was standing at the edge of the bed, but only found that they had strapped his head down too.

"You will refer to me as Madame. And you will refer to my partner as Miss Rosie, but most of your interactions will be with me." The older woman said, looking over his body and making him feel very uncomfortable.

"Why am I here?"

"Ah, there we go. I was beginning to think you would never ask, Spencer Reid." Madame smiled a cruel smile. "You are here because you're different than others of your kind. We've been watching your team, among other branches of the FBI. You see, the FBI has a few members who are not brain washed like the rest of society. If we wanted to find the perfect male specimen, we would have to find one that isn't brainwashed. At first we thought that cop from New Orleans, you blonde friend's male partner, would be a good choice, but no, he was too dumb. Your dark friend is too filthy and rude, the way he speaks to your computer girl. Your leader let his wife get killed, your Italian drunkard friend is too disrespectful, and I could go on and on with the flaws of the FBIs males." She made a dramatic hand flick.

"But you, Spencer Reid, were very much different. Yes, you wrongfully put your poor mother in a nut house, but we can't expect a your kind to be perfect in every way. Where other men are rough and rude, you are kinder, gentle, and have never shown any signs of that primitive need to overpower women. Women seem to hug you first, not you to them. So we figured who better to experiment with than a kind, non-brain washed half breed?"

"Half breed?" Spencer was even more confused now than when he started. Normally, dealing with the mentally ill wasn't to hard for him. He had been working with mentally ill since he was a child, and now with a job in the BAU, working with the mentally ill and figuring out why they think certain things is all a part of his everyday life. He thought for sure he would be used to it by now, not taken aback by it. But being called a half breed was definitely a new one for him. Most people who used the term half breed when referring to humans were racists when talking about someone who was half white half black. Both his parents had been white, and his grandparents and great parents too. As far back into his past as he had gone, everyone was white. So what was the other half?

"Of course. You couldn't possibly think you were entirely human, could you? You're half female." Miss Rosie said in an overly chirpy voice. "Physically, you are male. But your personality and behavior is all female."

Just as he was about to argue against that, Madame moved out of his sight and he felt a hand rest against his leg.

"So strange different a male's body is compared to a female..."

"Morgan, call Garcia and have her track Reid's cell phone. The response to my text about meeting at seven might have been from the unsub. Also have her break down the surveillance video." Hotch said as they arrived at the station. "JJ, inform the rest of the officers of the latest victim. Rossi, Kate, try to see if anyone saw those janitors leave the hotel last night."

While the team broke off to do as they were told, Hotch went over to the map to see if he could make a geographic profile.

"What do you mean track Reid's phone, he's with you guys." Garcia asked after Morgan called. "Please tell me he's with you guys and just lost his phone somehow."

"He's not with us and we don't know what happened." Morgan explained. "All his stuff was still in his room except for his phone."

"So he's a victim again?" Garcia whimpered. "Again? Wasn't Tobias enough? And then all the other times he was victimized, the whole Maeve thing-"

"Penelope-"

"I think that was enough. It was more than enough."

"Baby girl, focus. We need to find his phone so we can find him. "

"Right. Searching." She turned back to her computer screens, typing away as she tracked the GPS in Reid's phone.

"And we have a surveillance video of the unsubs. It's a little blurry. Think you could clean it up and get us some information?"

"Think? Honey I know I can clean it up and get information. Send it over and I'll get back to you."

"Thank you, Garcia. Sending it now." Hanging up, Morgan sent the video and hoped he would hear back from her soon. Groaning, he rubbed his face and went to get another cup of coffee. Garcia was right, Reid had been through enough already. Why couldn't the unsub had taken him instead? Give Reid a break.

He made his way over to Hotch to see where the older man had gotten so far. "Anything?" He asked.

"No, it makes no sense." Hotch shook his head. In front of them was several maps from the cities and towns that similar murders had taken place. "The unsub started in Virginia, then when up to New York, all the way down to Florida, back up to South Dakota, down to New Mexico, and now to Kansas. Each state had only one victim except for New Mexico where two bodies were found. Now they killed two men and kidnapped Reid."

"They're going North and South, up and down the country. But Kansas is right in the middle." Morgan scratched at his chin. "Garcia looked for a paper trail yesterday, but couldn't find any. How are they moving so much?"

"I don't know." Hotch was staring intently at the map, a red tack marking where each body was found. There was nothing steady about this case. Each murder seemed to be random, any time of day, any day of the month. The only thing connecting the victims was they were all male. Other than that, race and age didn't seem to matter, and neither did job.

Morgan's phone rang, and caller ID said Garcia. He flipped it open, pressing speaker.

"You're on speaker Garcia."

"Of course I am, why wouldn't I be?" She answered. Without missing a beat, she continued. "I tried to track Reid's phone, but it's gone. I can't get a signal from anywhere, and I tried everything but it's like it disappeared. Maybe it's off or someone destroyed it or it's in one of those really creepy places like that desert in New Mexico where compasses don't work or Bermuda Triangle or something, I don't know. But I can't find it."

Hotch and Morgan exchanged a glance. That phone was the only possibility of a lead they had right now. Without it, they feared they would come to a dead end.


	4. Chapter 4

"We're going to treat this like any other case." Hotch repeated as they again met in the conference room in the Kansas city police department. Rossi, Morgan, Kate, and JJ were sitting at the table and Garcia was on speaker.

"Garcia, run a background check on Reid, check his family history. We have to see if there was something else that might have made him a victim. It has to be more than just him not being an alpha male." Hotch instructed.

"On it." Garcia answered.

"Now what do we know about the other victims?" He asked the team.

"They were all alphas, and they all did something bad to a woman." JJ stated.

"Ovaries had been planted in them." Kate added.

"There has never been more than just two in each state until now." Morgan said.

"They all end up gelded." Rossi continued the list.

"Anything else?" Hotch prompted. Everyone exchanged a glance, but shook their heads. They had next to nothing on this unsub.

With the help of the city cops, they looked through old unsolved cases for anything else similar, but came up with nothing. About an hour later, Garcia called.

"You're on speaker." Hotch told her once he got the team assembled in the conference room again.

"As much as I hate digging through Reid's life like this, this was really interesting. Not in a good way either, it was actually rather disturbing." Garcia started. "So we all know how Mama Reid is schizophrenic, and how it can be passed down though gene and stuff and how he's afraid he'll end up with? Well, after looking at his family history, I can see why. Reid's grandparents were normal, no mental disorders there, but the generation before that, his great grandfather was schizophrenic and later diagnosed with Alzheimer. He had a pretty quiet life though, so there's nothing too exciting about that. But his great great grandfather's family is where things start to get interesting. See, the one who reproduced was mentally healthy, no disorders or anything. He had two younger siblings though, a set of twins. The sister was violently schizophrenic and by today's standards she would've been considered a psychopath because she had no guilt whatsoever for anything she did. She was institutionalized when she was 8, and we all know how horrible those places were back then. Her twin brother, though, was no institutionalized despite also being extremely violent and mentally unstable. Instead, he went on to medical school and got a job at the same institution his sister was at, where he became a leading doctor that conducted hundreds of cruel experiments on patients to find a cure for them. She died a few years later under mysterious circumstances. When he retired, he went ahead and continued to experiment and torture people, until cops found him and he was taken into custody but committed suicide before they could start a trial.

A few other patients form the hospital claim that he had tortured them, and a few came from a woman who claimed he would rape and torture her and that God told her that he did that because men are filthy and brutal and that women should be the ones running the hospital and the country. Which, I did my best to dig more into here and it turns out she had children who were big activists in women's rights movements all over the country, and each generation seemed to be a little more extreme than the last, and even though it says there's still members of that bloodline roaming this large planet we call home, I can not find any paper trail on them. I only know that her name is Madame Dorothea and she's extremely wealthy. No address on where she lives though."

"So this could all be some long-awaited revenge." JJ said. "The must've found out Reid was related to the doctor at that institution, and now they want revenge for it."

"But how could they have found out?" Morgan asked. "It was several generations back."

"You can find out almost anything online by now." Hotch said. "They just tracked the blood lines."

Reid must've passed out again, because he found himself blinking open his eyes again, though this time he could hear a familiar hum. Was he on the plane? Maybe he had fallen asleep on the team's plane and had a weird dream. He tried to move his hand to rub his eyes, but found again he was restrained. Whatever he was laying on didn't feel like the couch and it was way to big to be the couch. He blinked open his eyes and looked around, and remembered what happened. The women were now out of sight, but what they did to him came rushing back. While they didn't actually hurt him, they had touched him in ways he wasn't used to and in places he'd rather not have creepy older women touch. Just the thought of the way they had touched him made him gag, and he had to swallow hard and concentrate on anything else to avoid from puking. It was bad enough he was chained to a bed for hours now, the last he wanted to choke on vomit since it seemed they had taped his head down too.

He groaned and tried to move, just to ease some of the stiffness in his limbs, but he couldn't move more than a few small inches. He could hear the voices of Madame and Miss Rosie not too far away, but didn't seem to realize he was awake.

"-Bizarre. The male body is strange, Madame. Yet I don't act that way, so your theory must be right. I'm the sign from God that women are superior. Men can't control themselves." Miss Rosie was saying.

"Yes, and we'll find a way to fix your problem soon. Once we prove my theory to the rest of the world, they will make your operation free and with the best surgeons from around the world." Madame purred in response.

"Female surgeons, right Madame?" Miss Rosie sounded like an excited child asking a parent if Santa was real.

"Of course, my little miss. Of course female surgeons. Males should never touch a woman. A woman can touch a man first, but not the other way around." Madame assured her, and Reid felt as thought they had turned to look at him.

"We can test our other theories on him shortly. We just need to wait a little longer until his systems are completely empty, so there wont be any mess."


	5. Chapter 5

Several days went by since Reid was kidnapped, and the team was no closer than they were. The murders seemed to have stopped and no new evidence could be found. It was extremely frustrating. Unlike the first time Reid had been taken hostage, quite a while ago by Tobias, there was no communication with him. They had no idea if he was dead or alive. And then came the order they all hated.

"What do you mean, we're going home?" Morgan demanded while the team was sitting in the meeting room they were given.

"The director wants us back. There's been no new evidence, and there are more cases building up." Hotch explained again. "I don't want to leave either, but there's nothing more we can do."

Most of the team was quiet. Going home meant this case was going into the unsolved folder, a member of their team still lost.

"What about Reid, we can't just leave him!" Morgan protested.

"We don't even know where he is, Morgan. The unsub has left bodies all over the country, and they're all dumped seven days after going missing, and in a place we can find them. No one has reported another body found, so there's still a chance he's alive-"

"Which is exactly why should stay here and keep looking!"

"If you'd let me finish..." Hotch glared at him. "We are being ordered back to Quantico, and there are more cases to work on. If you want to continue to look through the files on this case in your free time, you can. If you find a lead, I'll find a way to get us on it. Otherwise, we have no choice but to go back. Pack your things, the plane the waiting."

 **Reid's POV**

He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but he was sure it had been a few days. As horrible as these people were, he was a little relieved to not be getting smacked with a burning stick or dealing with several personalities in a single person. Madame and Miss Rosie were at least steady in their delusions, and in a strange way, they didn't seem to want him to be in pain. Yes, they kept him strapped down, but they had un-taped his head so he could at least look side to side and pick his head up if he wanted to. Most of the time though, he didn't. They fed him light foods, like soup, claiming they were clearing out his system. Whenever he would ask why, they would just say he would be thankful for it later.

Despite still getting fed and having the freedom to move his head, he was still very uncomfortable and not in good condition. He had lost weight, soup not being nearly enough to sustain a healthy weight. He was getting caffeine headaches from lack of coffee (although that did make him realize that he should probably slow down on the coffee intake), and they wouldn't let him up for _anything._ At times, they would drug him with more chloroform and he would wake up to fresh sheets. Every day they would 'experiment' and 'study' him, mainly the parts he would rather not have them touching and experimenting with. It almost made him wish they would smack his feet with burning sticks instead. An actual doctor was one thing, but mentally unstable feminists -feminazis, actually, as JJ had called them- was something completely different and unacceptable.

He blinked open his eyes after yet another sheet-changing and found that he was laying on something different now. It was still the same place, the walls now familiar, but the texture of what he was laying on wasn't fabric. It was plastic, like the kind you see people put over their furniture to keep it clean (which Reid never understood, because how could you comfortably fall asleep on the couch if it's covered in plastic?). What were they trying to do now? From the lighting, he assumed it must still be daytime, maybe around the middle of the day. He couldn't see Madame or Miss Rosie, but he could hear them somewhere out of his sight.

He wished they would've stayed there too. When they were in his range of sight, he saw that they were holding knives, a mix of surgical and kitchen knives, and had on those little blue surgical masks. Fear shot through him right away. Surely they wouldn't geld him yet, they couldn't. They had been talking about more experiments on his last night, and they had even said that those experiments included those parts. Surely those parts were meant to still be attached, right?

Madame looked over at him and laughed. "Calm down, Spencer Reid. This won't be so bad. You'll be thankful for it, I'm sure. I'm positive we can make it work this time too, unlike all the failures. And if it works on the inside, we can move on to the outside!"

Reid wasn't sure he liked the sound of that.

"What are you doing then?" He managed to squeak out. He cursed his own voice, sounding so frightened. Like a child, not a trained FBI agent. How did the others do it? They never sounded scared or unsure. If it was quoting something he read, his voice would shake. If he was flustered, he would stutter and ramble. Even when he was quoting something he read or talking about something he knew, he would trip over his own words sometimes and look like an idiot. Well, maybe not an idiot, but not the genius they all said he was.

"Madame, I think it's safe to tell him our goal now. He's withstood more than our other test subjects." Miss Rosie said from behind Madame.

"If you wish, darling." Madame said to her, before turning back to Spencer. "My dear Miss Rosie was born as a sign from God that women are meant to be the superior race. You see, she was born with both the parts of a woman and the parts of a man. But the parts of the man don't work. They are useless. But the parts of a woman, they work. So God is telling us that men are inferior. He wants us to help them, by making them as glorious as us. For generations, my family has been trying to prove this to the world. But people kept getting in the way, your great grandfather more so than others. You see, he tortured my poor great grandmother, who had great visions for the world. He raped her, tormented her, did horrible things. We are a forgiving family though, and the next generation forgave your cursed family. But when I met Miss Rosie and learned of her gift, I realized that this is what I was meant to do! You have that same gentleness that my Great grandmother was known for, you know. And yet your bloodline is one violent men. Therefore, it was my mission from God to capture you to repay for the sins of your great grandfather. You, my precious gift, are my great grandmother, sent back to us through the family that ruined her, brought to me so I can bring my grandmother back. I will save you, don't worry. You won't be stuck in that cursed body much longer, grandmother dearest."

Spencer thought for sure that after being in the BAU for about 10 years, he would've gotten used to hearing people make such far out claims. But no, they still shocked him. No amount of case studies and unsub interviews would ever make him fully prepared for whatever crazy was thrown at him next. And this woman was way up there on the list of psychosis.

"I'm not your grandmother. I'm not my great grandfather either, I'd never hurt a woman-"

"Exactly! That's because you _are_ my great grandmother! You can't stand the idea of harming another woman!" Madame grinned from ear to ear, and held up the surgical knife and another rag probably soaked in chloroform.

"Please don't, I'm sure if you just land I can help you find your real Great grandmother, I'm not the right person-" He tried to protest, willing to kind of play into her fantasy, but it was no use. She covered his nose and mouth with the rag, and he felt the rush of dizziness before his world went black. Before he was completely out though, he could feel the blade pressing against his lower midsection, as she were going to remove his appendix for some normal surgery. But no, he knew what she was doing now. Several of the other men had been found with rotting ovaries crudely implanted. And now it was his turn.


	6. Chapter 6

**Reid's POV**

The first thing Reid noticed when he woke up was the pain. It was intense, like nothing he had felt before. Not even getting shot in the neck had hurt this much, and that had honestly sucked big time. But now the pain was along his abdomen, and it hurt to even breathe. With more effort than he should've needed to use, he lifted his head to try to see what they had did, and where they were. He saw the stitches just below his stomach, the swelling in the area giving the location away. There were two incisions, and it took him a minute to realize what they must've done. All their victims had been found with rotting ovaries in them, in the general area they would be in a woman. Putting together the pieces of what Madame had said before the 'operation', he figured that if he lived a certain amount of time after they planted the ovaries, they would move on to remove parts he would much rather keep. His time was running out, and he was beginning to think that maybe the team wouldn't find him in time.

He spotted Miss Rosie and Madame on the seats, both asleep. He tried shift his position a little, maybe reach the phone that was just out of his reach or maybe something to cut the ropes that were holding him down. But as soon as he tried to move, a wave of nausea forced him to stop and take deep breaths to keep from vomiting. His body was attacking the ovaries, and no doubt the organs were going to rot. These next few days were going to be absolute hell. With a groan, he laid his head back and tried to relax. Surely, the team would find him. Someone would find him, and he would get better and go back out on the field when he recovered from this ordeal. Then everything would go back to normal. Deep down, he knew that wouldn't happen. Nothing would be normal after this, if he lived through it. And unless they had found a lead while he was gone, they would've been called back to Quantico to work on other cases. It was a rather depressing thought.

 **Three Days Later...**

The next three days proved to be as bad as he had predicted. They had tried to feed him soup, but he couldn't hold any of it down. His body was burning with fever as it attacked the unfamiliar organs in his body, the the incisions were getting infected as Madame and Miss Rosie failed to actually clean it, claiming there was no way it could get dirty if he stayed on the plane. Three days of violent vomiting, and high fever took its toll on him. He thought for sure that was it, this was the end. He was going to die any day now, and be just another body on the autopsy table.

 **Meanwhile in the same area...**

Emily Pretniss was watching the radar on her computer screen with a rather bored expression. She was returning to the States for a much needed vacation after another weapon-smuggling case Russia. That one had proven much easier than Ian Doyle, thankfully, and the unsub was killed in a firefight with the law enforcement there. When they had finally crossed into American territory, she had turned on her radar just to see how many planes they would pass. A small dot appeared on the far edge of the screen and she perked up. That was weird. Nothing was supposed to be flying there at the moment, and it was too big to be someone's personal propeller plane.

She radioed her pilot and told him to change course and follow that other plane. There was something about it that wasn't right. While he changed the course to follow that plane, she pulled up another screen on her laptop and scrolled through her past files. Her desire to follow the plane was based off something she had worked on before, she was sure of it! She just needed to find it. What case did she work on that went unsolved where the unsub was suspected to have a plane?

The Gender Swapping case! It had started on a few little islands off the coast of the United States, a few victims from South America and Canada. At first, she had thought they had a boat. But victims were being found, even when there were people watching all the docks and ports and patrols going over the waters. Then the case had gone cold and she had been forced to move on. Not too long ago, she had gotten a call from JJ saying Reid had gotten kidnapped during a similar case, but instead of just being gelded, the men had been found without ANY male gentile left, and with ovaries. Were the cases related? JJ had given her some of the details of the case, men being found all over the country and being found near airports.

Now here she was, following a plane flying illegally after the case for the BAU had gone cold. She had a bad feeling about this plane. If she had more proof that a gut feeling, she would've remotely taken control of the plane and forced it land. But if she did that and was wrong, there would be serious problems to deal with that she would rather not have to deal with during her only vacation of the year. If it was the unsub though, than they had Reid on that plane and he might not have much time left. She found the nearest air tower and radioed them, telling them to order all planes in the area to the ground. If the plane they were following didn't land, they would have every right to take control of it and force it down. And sure enough, the plane didn't land.  
Emily grinned. Had she really just run into the unsub they'd been hunting for over a year?

It didn't take her long to gain control of the plane. She had recently learned how to do it and it was still fresh in her mind as she forced the plane into a landing. Her pilot landed there plane a few minutes later, to avoid a collision. Air port security was outside already, curious as to why they were told to make everyone land. Climbing out of the plane, Emily had her gun ready as she motioned for the security and police to surround the plane.

Everything that happened next happened quickly.

The door was forced open.

There was screaming and yelling and the buzz of tasers.

Emily entered the plane, gun ready, several police officers behind her. The sight that greeted them was shocking and the smell sickening. With one man following her, she made her to a bed where Spencer Reid was tied down with ropes, spread eagle and naked. The skin around his wrists and ankles was red and raw, he was much thinner than the last time she had seen him, and his abdomen was swollen and irritated looking, stitches coming undone. The bed he was on was stained with blood, vomit, and she didn't want to know what else. He was unconscious, and she could see the flush of fever covering his skin.

"Someone call the paramedics!" She called out, and someone hurried to do as she said. She pulled a sheet out of cabinet over the bed and laid it over his lower half, before heading outside. Scrolling through her contacts, Emily called Hotch.

"Hotchner." His familiar voice answered after the second ring, though he didn't seem to know who had called. Chances are, he was distracted by the case and had answered without looking at the phone.

"Hotch, it's Emily. I just found Reid." She said, cutting right to the chase. She could almost hear him snap to attention.

"Alive?"

"Yes, but barely. He's in bad shape, paramedics are on the way. We're in upstate New York." She said. A helicopter was coming in for a landing, a big red cross on the side. "He's being air lifted to the hospital now. "

"Were the unsubs there?"

"Yes, they're in custody. There's no one else but the pilot, who's also being taken away. The plane will probably be taxied off the runway and left alone until you guys come look at it."

"We'll be there soon." Hotch hung up, and looked at the rest of the team, who were sitting around the table in their meeting room. They had been just going over a case they had recently finished. "They found Reid."


	7. Chapter 7

The team wasted no time in getting on the plane and flying to the airport closest to the hospital Reid was going to be at. None of them were totally sure what their fellow agent's condition was since Emily had hung up to get on the helicopter with him. All they knew was that he was in bad shape.

The plane ride was tense, everyone keeping their worries to themselves, they were all thinking the same thing: that their youngest member, the one they all thought of as a little brother, was probably fighting to survive. They all felt guilty that they had failed to protect him again, and that they had failed to find him. Emily had only found him by chance, against all possible odds.

If the plane ride was tense, the ride to the hospital was even more so. They had squeezed all six of them in the car –Garcia insisted on coming. Hotch was driving and Rossi was in the passenger seat, Kate, Morgan, and Garcia in the back seat, and JJ riding in the very back since she was the smallest. They didn't care if that was technically breaking the law, it wasn't like they hadn't broken the law before, most of the time in attempt to protect it.

Hotch was the one to break the silence. "When he's well enough, I'm going to offer him retirement." He stated, not daring to say 'if he gets well enough'. "He's been through a lot, more than the rest of us have in my opinion. The fact he hasn't retired before this case is surprising."

"How much _has_ he been through? Kate asked.

"Tobias Hankel." JJ stated.

"The long distance killer in the hospital." Hotch said.

"When he was hostage on the train with Elle." Morgan added.

"The Fisher King case was pretty hard on him too." JJ continued.

"The anthrax case too, that was another close call for him." Garcia jumped in.

"He went undercover once to see if a cult leader was sexually harassing young girls, and him and Prentiss were held hostage." Hotch remembered.

"He was shot in the knee after pushing a doctor out of the way." Rossi added.

"He didn't react well when we told him Prentniss had 'died' either." JJ sighed. "Well, no one was okay with that one, but still."

"Maeve." Garcia said. "That was horrible."

"And he was shot in the neck last year." Hotch concluded.

Kate raised an eye brow. "When did he join the BAU again?"

"When he was 22." Garcia answered.

"What about college?" Kate was honestly surprised. How in the world had a 22 year old managed to get into the FBI.

"Kate, the kid's IQ level is 187. He finished high school when he was 12." Morgan pointed out.

"Wow." Kate blinked. "I knew he was smart, but that's impressive."

The rest of the ride was done in silence, everyone lost in their own thoughts. When they got to the hospital, they were brought up to the ER waiting room, where Prentniss was pacing around the room.

"Thank God you guys got here." She said, relieved. "He's in the operating room, the doctors are taking out the ovaries the unsub tried to implant. I haven't heard anything since then, but he was in bad shape when I found him. He must've been laying there for a few days at least."

"How did you find him?" Garcia asked.

"I was coming home for vacation, but was bored on the flight so I turned on the radar on my computer and was going to just see what else in the air around us, and a plane came onto the screen, but there shouldn't have been anyone else in the air over there. I called the air tower and they told everyone to land, and that one didn't, so I took over and forced it to land, and sure enough, there was Reid, and the two unsubs."

"Two?" Hotch asked. "We only thought there was one."

"Nope, there's two. One goes by the title of Madame, and she's been at this kind of stuff for years. She inherited her family's fortune when they died, and she tried for medical school but failed, and after that she started a cult basically of women who believed they were superior. The other unsub met her through that group, and goes by the name Miss Rosie. She was born with a defect that gave her both male and female gentiles, but the male ones didn't fully develop so they were useless. They twisted that into a sign from God that they were supposed to change the world and basically turn men into women, and going through some of the files on their plane, Madame had an obsession with stalking Reid for a long time. Several years, actually. Why she didn't strike sooner, I don't know." Prentiss explained.

"That's so creepy." Garcia said. "That an FIB agent can be stalked for so long and never know. That _anyone_ can be stalked for a long time and not know." She shivered.

The rest of the team agreed, and the wait began again. It felt like days had passed before the doctor came in, but it was only an hour or so.

"We don't have anyone really in the ER right now, so I'm assuming y'all here for Spencer Reid?" The doctor asked, a thick southern accent as if he had moved in from Texas not too long ago.

"How is he?" Hotch asked.

"Not so good, I'm afraid." The doctor replied saddly. "We removed the ovaries, but they had been there for two or three days and were rotting. His body was attacking them, and the rotting was making him sick. His stomach was empty, and the wear on his teeth says he's been vomiting quite a bit and he hasn't been getting the proper nourishment for a while before hand either. I'm also quite sorry to say that there are signs of sexual harassment as well. As of right now, he's in critical condition. I hate to say it, but I'd be surprised if he makes it through the night."

"Can we see him?" Garcia asked, her voice shaking.

"Of course. Follow me." The doctor lead through the halls and stopped outside a room. The door was closed and there was a sign on it requesting that everyone entering the room wash their hands before and after and wear a mask over their nose and mouth. "His immune system is very weak right now." He offered a bottle of hand sanitizer to them, and gave everyone a little squirt of it. He passed a box of the little masks around, the kind the dentist wears or a surgeon, before opening the door to let them go inside.

Reid was laying on the bed, hooked up to an IV and the heart monitor, and a few other things monitoring his vitals. He was dressed in the hospital gowns and a blanket was draped over him, going all the way up to his shoulders. His hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat and his face still had the feverish tint to it. There a bucket of ice water and a cloth soaking in it on the table, as if a nurse had been trying to bring the fever down. An oxygen mask was covering his nose and mouth, assisting his exhausted body in breathing. Compared to how he had looked when Prentiss had found him on the plane, she thought he looked a lot more comfortable now.

The sight brought Garcia to tears, and she was the first one by his bed, taking the cloth from the bucket of ice water and dabbing at his forehead. Morgan was remembering the last time he saw Reid attached to so many machines, after the anthrax case. Even when he was shot in the neck, there weren't this many monitors and wires. It was hard sight for everyone to see, the baby of their team clinging to life by a thread.

They stayed in that room with him throughout the whole night, leaving only for the bathroom. They took turns sleeping, although no one got much sleep that night, everyone staying quiet so they could listen to the steady beeping of the heart monitor. Once during the night, around 3 am, the monitor fluttered, breaking rhythm for a terrifying few minutes. Nurses were there within 2 minutes, trying to find out what caused it, but it went back to normal before they could figure it out. It baffled them all, but being a doctor meant they had seen the body do many amazing things without explanation. So they decided to just watch him extra closely, but it didn't happen again.

He remained unconscious for most of the next day. It was almost dinner time by the time he made a small noise, almost a squeaky groan as his head moved to the side.

"Is he waking up?" Garcia asked, looking around at the others.

The couldn't do much more than shrug, unsure. He made another groaning noise before turning his head the other way and his eyes started to flutter open. The first thing he saw was Prentiss, but he didn't seem to recognize her. Instead, it seemed to send him into a panic, and he started shaking and clenched his eyes tight, seeming to hyperventilate

"Everyone out." Hotch ordered. "Give him room." He ushered everyone out of the room, but stayed in himself. Rossi, understanding what Hotch was doing, explained to the others that Reid might have developed PTSD after what he went through and it might take a while before he was comfortable around women again. Or at least, to the women he had known.

Hotch went back over to Reid's bed, and carefully put his hand on Reid's arm.

"Spencer, look at me. You're safe now. You're in the hospital, and you're safe." He said, keeping his voice even and clear. Reid opened his eyes again, and it seemed to take him a minute or two before he relized it was Hotch and he relaxed, his body seeming to go limp.

"Thank God it's over." Spencer breathed, shaking in relief. Hotch looked over at the machines that monitored his vitals. His temperature had gone down a lot, now down to a lower fever of 99 degrees instead of the dangerous temperature of 104. He was sure that for now, Reid would be okay, physically at least.


	8. Chapter 8

**I just want to clear a few things up:**

 **1\. I make no promises about characters living. When writing, I follow the motto that when faced with writers block, the best cure is to kill off a character.**

 **That DOES NOT mean that characters are guaranteed to die. I'm not sure what will happen yet.**

 **2\. Lots of things have happened to Reid during the past seasons, I just listed some of the major ones just to further the point that Reid simply has bad luck.**

 **And 3, I do have a much lighter-hearted story for Criminal Minds that also focuses on Reid. It's called What If and it's about if Maeve didn't die. The title may change though, because I'm not sure if I like that title. It'll be a series of one-shots. =)**

"The rest of the team and Prentniss are outside the door. Do you feel well enough to see them?" Hotch asked once he Reid calmed down a little more. The younger man shook his head no.

"They'll understand." He glanced over at the door. "I'm going to call the doctor in, okay?"

Reid nodded, but didn't say anything. He looked exhausted now that the fear had gone away. While his temperature may have gone down, he was still very weak. Hotch pressed the button to page the nurse, and then went to the door to update the team.

"He's still very weak, and the nurse should be coming to check him." He said. "He's not ready to see everyone yet. We don't know what he went through for these past few days, and it may take a while before he'd ready. When he is, behave yourselves."

He gave Garcia and Morgan a warning glance as he said that. "No bear hugging him, and no teasing him about anything that happened."

"What if I just give him a little hug?" Garcia asked.

"No. Not just because the stitches, but if he was sexually harassed, he's not going to want to be touched." Hotch said firmly.

"And he was harassed by women, so he might react very badly to any woman doing so much as touching his shoulder." Rossi added.

"Exactly. This isn't like when he was hostage to Tobias Hankel and beaten." Hotch agreed, and stepped aside as the nurse comes. "I'm going to stay with him a while longer, and update you guys in a few hours. Why don't you go find a hotel and get us some rooms?"

The team didn't seem to be in any rush to leave the hospital, but Rossi managed to herd everyone out, except Prentniss since she wasn't part of the team anymore.

"I'll just wait in the waiting room. I can't leave here until I know he's going to be okay." She said. Hotch nodded, and she went to go sit down. He went back into the room, only to find Reid panicking again and trying to avoid the woman nurse. Hotch immediately stepped between them and quietly said to the nurse, "He was tortured by a pair of women for several days, is there a male nurse you can send in?"

He could hear Reid's panicked, labored breathing behind him as the younger man whimpered from the memories that were no doubt still fresh.

"I'll see if there are any available at the moment, but I was assigned to him-"

"And that's fine, but would you put a soldier just returning from war in a place with a lot of fireworks?" Hotch interrupted her. "He needs a male nurse."

The nurse hmphed, but left, and Hotch turned back to Reid to try to calm him down. He could see the far away look in his eyes that said he wasn't in the room, but rather re-living whatever he had gone through on that plane.

"You're alright, Spencer. You're okay, there's no one here that wants to hurt you." He said, reaching out to touch his shoulder. Reid flinched away from the touch, but seemed to have recognized Hotch's voice and was slowly coming back to reality. For a few seconds, Hotch worried that maybe this event would trigger a schizophrenic break. It was possible, he knew, but would it happen to Reid?

"Look at me, Reid." Hotch said firmly, putting a hand on the bed but not close to Reid. Reid looked over at him automatically, his eyes slowly coming back into focus.

"Hotch?" He asked, as if double checking he was really there.

"Yes, I'm right here." Hotch assured him, and could almost see Reid's relief written on his face. "You're in the hospital, Reid. You don't have to worry about anyone hurting you anymore."

"Texas." He muttered, closing his eyes as he leaned back the pillows. For a minute, Hotch wasn't sure what he meant, until he realized he was referring to what happened in Texas after he was shot in the neck. The unsub had gotten into the hospital and tried to killed him through the IV. He cursed himself silently for letting that detail slip his mind.

"Well that wont happen here." He promised. "I'm not going to let it, and neither will the rest of the team."

"Where am I?" Reid asked sleepily. "State."

"New York." Hotch answered, looking up as a new nurse walked in. This was a man, with graying hair and kind eyes. "The nurse is here. He's not going to hurt you, Spencer."

Hotch almost felt as if he was talking to a child, with how carefully he had to speak to Reid.

"So how you feeling, Dr. Reid?" The nurse asked, after looking at the clipboard.

"Like sh*t." Reid grumbled, eyes still closed. Hotch was surprised to hear that kind of language coming from him. The only time he ever heard Reid curse was when he was extremely frustrated, and he was so patient it was hard to get there. The only time he could really remember that happening was when Morgan gave the press Reid's number as a prank.

"Well, that's to be expected." The man said, his ID declaring him Dr. Hurcomb. "Can you tell me where the most intense pain is?"

"My head."

Dr. Hurcomb looked at Hotch with an eye brow raised, but spoke to Reid. "What about your stomach, where we removed the rotting ovaries?"

"I have a migraine." Reid insisted, as if he didn't register what the nurse was saying. "It's too bright."

"He's had a history of migraines." Hotch explained. "He has a treatment plan, I can get a hold of it in a few minutes." He sent a quick text to Garcia, telling her to search Reid's prescriptions.

"Alright, well for now we can lower the lights. It's still light enough outside that I can still see without them on." Dr Hurcomb said, turning off the lights in the room. The only light was now coming through the window's thin blinds. He went back over the bed, and carefully moved the blankets, causing goose bumps to spread up Reid's arms almost right away. To make it more comfortable for him, they had cut out a flap in the gown to flip over to check his incisions without having to undress him. It was a little red and puffy around the stitches, but the swelling had gone down a lot from when Prentniss had found him.

"Do you feel any pain around here?" Dr. Hurcomb asked again, not wanting to touch the area.

"Yes." He nodded, but didn't go further.

"Where is the most painful?" The nurse prompted. "Do the incisions hurt, or is the most pain on the inside?"

"Inside."

"Okay, that's to be expected." The nurse pulled the flap back down and covered him back up with the blanket. "Do you think you could try to eat a little something?"

"No." Reid shook his head. His eyes were still closed.

"Why not?"

"I'm nauseous. My stomach hurts."

"Are you sure it's not just hunger? You haven't eaten anything in a few days."

"I don't feel well." Reid insisted, shaking his head.

"Alright, we'll try again later. But you have to eat soon. I'm going to give you some pain killers and something to ease your headache." Dr. Hurcomb got up and left the room to get what he needed. Hotch expected Reid to protest the painkillers, but he didn't. He just laid there with his eyes closed, looking more like a child than an adult. A very sick child.

Later that Night…

The painkillers had knocked Reid out almost instantly. Hotch stayed with him still, and informed the nurse of what Spencer had been taking for his migraines. The nurse had nodded and went to go get the stuff to get him back on it as soon as possible.

As Hotch sat there, listening the heart monitor beeping and the steady sound of Spencer's breathing, he couldn't help but find himself profiling Reid. Even though he had worked with Reid for years, there were still secrets he kept hidden, and there had been secrets the whole times. No one knew that Reid's mother was schizophrenic until the Fisher King case, and Garcia was the first one to know. Reid was the only one who joined the team after Garcia who she hadn't done her own background check on, because from the start, Reid was had seemed like the most trusting of the group, the youngest and most naive, but he was anything but. He had grown up in a broken household, with a mother who would break from reality and a father who left them when he was young.

He was bullied in school for being so young and smart, and his mother had pushed books on him probably since he could read. Instead of playing with toys and going out with friends and other kids his age, he would read books. Who knows how many times after his father left that he was stuck making his own dinner because his mother was having an episode or was too depressed to get out of bed? Maybe he had found a teacher to take over as a father figure, or maybe had simply waited for his father to come back. To escape the reality of his life, of the bullying and abandonment and stress of having a mentally ill mother, he had turned to books. He must've read thousands of them while he was still a kid.

For Spencer, there had been no one to teach him how to kids his age should act. There was no one to teach him how to cook, he had to learn on his own. No one was there to let him feel like a normal kid. Hell, had he even had birthday parties as a child? He had seemed so shocked when the team had thrown him one for the first time, that Hotch doubted he could remember any birthday parties as a kid. The reason he liked Halloween so much was probably because it was the only holiday where he wouldn't get books. He could go out, dress up like all the other kids, and get candy, like a normal kid. Christmas was probably books. Easter was probably egg-less and if he got anything from the "Easter bunny" it was probably more books. Birthdays, if anything, was probably more books. Maybe a new chess game or a word search book sometimes, but nothing that normal kids would play with.

Or maybe he would've been like that even if his mother wasn't schizophrenic and his father hadn't left. While Strauss had looked at his papers before accepting him into the BAU, she had told the team he had Asperger's syndrome (She had said it in an almost curious way, since she hadn't been entirely sure what it was). Unless one knew what the symptoms of it were, most people wouldn't really register that Spencer had it. There had been a time shortly after Spencer had joined the BAU, maybe a month or two as they had worked a few cases by then, when Hotch had been curious and went through a list of symptoms to see if Reid really did have it. From first glance, he was just socially awkward and incredibly book smart. But sure enough, there were several symptoms on the list he found that fit Reid's person spot on:

-Excellent rote memory in certain areas _(anything he read, he could recite it back perfectly. Eidetic memory)_

-Exceptionally high skills in some areas, but very low skills in others. _(Math, chemistry, words, ect he could figure out and do with ease that college professors even lack. But his physical skills were very poor.)_

-Excellent vocabulary

-Makes honest, but often inappropriate observations _(Not inappropriate as in sexually inappropriate, but rather out of place and unrelated, in Reid's case)_

-Literal language: difficulty understanding figures of speech, similes, parodies, allegories, etc. _(This wasn't constant, but he sometimes seemed to need to think more about sarcastic comments before deciding if they were sarcastic or not)_

-Inside feeling not matching outside behavior _(Even while he was upset or mad or scared, he was calm –mostly, anyway- and quiet. He had a hard time dealing with emotions)_

-Difficulty understanding other's humor

-Sensitivity to light _(He wasn't sure if this counted, since it didn't start until the migraines did, as far as he could tell)_

 **((List of symptoms:** **w w w. mk downey** **characteristics. Html**

 **remove the spaces)**

He was a germophobe and technophobe as well, and at times Hotch had wondered if maybe had a touch of OCD, since he was so neat with everything in his desk and from the one time Hotch had been in his apartment, all the books had been on the shelves in alphabetical order and in order of the year they were written. There were even times when Hotch had wondered if maybe Reid was schizophrenic because of the many unexplainable habits he seemed to have, such as never wearing a matching pair of socks. He had yet to come up with a reasonable explanation for that when asked about it too. He was lactose intolerant, yet still ate dairy (to an extent) and his coffee intake was extremely high, and with a lot of sugar.

Hotch was snapped out of his thoughts by a knocking on the door, and looked over to see Rossi coming in. The Italian glanced over at Reid.

"Sleeping still?" He asked.

"He was given some pretty strong pain killers. He's probably going to be out for night." Hotch explained.

Rossi nodded and came over, sitting in the chair on the other side of the bed. "Ya know, he looks to you as a father figure." He said, but didn't look at Hotch. He was looking at the sleeping form of Reid.

"What makes you say that?" Hotch asked, leaning back in his chair.

"Well, his father left when he was young. I don't know what he did during those years, but I know he thought of Gideon as a father figure. When Gideon died, he probably felt abandoned again. So he adopted you at his father figure, even if he doesn't realize it." Rossi explained. "He's probably adopted this whole team as his family. I'm the crazy uncle, Morgan is his older brother, JJ is his older sister, Garcia is the weird cousin that everyone likes but don't know why, and Prentniss, Elle, Alex, and Kate are….Well, I don't know what they'd be."

Hotch looked at Reid and thought about it. Chances are, it was true. The team all thought of Reid as the baby of the group, they all wanted to protect him from the violence, especially when he has first joined. But Reid probably thought of the rest of them as family, surrogates for the lack of family he had growing up. And Reid was horribly loyal. Deep down, Rossi and Hotch both knew that Reid wouldn't retire. He would keep going until he was either gunned down or there were no more unsubs to catch. And unfortunately, the second option would never happen. The only question was, would he be gunned down on the field or in his mind?

 **Well, that was the longest chapter I've written for any story in a long time. I was kind of playing around with Reid's past here and exploring his character a bit, as well as how I think Hotch thinks of him, and thinking about how strange it is that you can have someone with the same disorders/phobias as Reid be an unsub in an episode, while he's so much quieter and kinder. The mind is a strange thing, that's for sure.**


	9. Chapter 9

It was a whole week before Reid was released from the hospital. The first two days there, he had been very out of it and sickly and would panic at the sight of women. He was almost childish at first, whiny and grumpy, but on the third day, he was feeling well enough to eat soft, light foods and he was much more reasonable. A little grumpy still, but alert and aware of his surroundings for the first time since they found him.

Hotch went into the room first thing in the morning, as he had done since the 1st day. Sometimes Morgan and Rossi would switch places with him, but they tried to make sure he was never in the room with just a doctor so Spencer wouldn't freak out. While he had been quiet for the most part, Hotch didn't want to risk it. When he entered the room, he found Reid was wide awake while Morgan was sleeping in the chair across the room.

"How do you feel?" He asked, not sure if Reid would be aware enough to answer. While he might look awake, he might have still be delusional. It was an extreme trauma that he had gone through.

"I've had better days." Reid replied. "But I guess I'm okay."

"Good. Do you remember anything?" Hotch asked. "Fr-"

"I remember everything." Reid interrupted, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "Everything, from getting attacked in my room, to the plane, and waking up here. We're in upstate New York, my nurse is Dr. Hurcomb, and Madame and Miss Rosie are in custody."

Hotch nodded. "They've been doing what they did to you for years, starting off on small islands all throughout the Pacific. They're being tried for crimes by several other countries too. They're going to be locked up for a long time."

"Good." Reid nodded, and blinked open his eyes again.

Hotch sat down on the chair next to Reid's bed and gave him a series look. "You've been through a lot these past few years. You've been in the BAU for about 10 years now. So I'm offering you full retirement, if you want it. You've been through more than most agents, Reid, and no one would blame you if you decide you're done."

"Retirement?" He asked, his voice that same small, almost shy voice he would get when offered something he didn't understand. "I'm only in my 30s. That's too young to retire."

"There are millions of other jobs you can get. With your mind, you can get pretty much any job you want." Hotch pointed out. "You're still young. There's so much more you can do."

Reid frowned and shook his head. "I don't want another job. I like this one."

"Alright. If you ever change your mind-"

"I won't."

Hotch put his hands up in surrender. "Okay. But you know you're going to have to work with the girls still, right? Keeping female nurses away from you is one thing, but I can't keep Garcia or JJ or any other woman away. Unsubs and victims may still be women and they may cling to you as they always have for one reason or another."

"I know." Reid nodded.

"Do you think you're ready to see them again now?" Hotch asked, not taking his eyes off Spencer. The younger agent looked unsure for a minute, before he nodded.

"Yes. I can see them." He finally said. Hotch nodded and went to the door to bring the girls of the team in. Hotch stepped out of the room to talk to the doctors about Reid's release. Prentniss was the first in, followed by Garcia and then JJ and Kate. Reid's first thought was to duck away from them and hide, but he held back. These were the girls who had been at his back and he at theirs for years. Well, sorta. Kate was only a year and Garcia was never out on the field, but neither of them were a threat to him. Prentniss and JJ were the only ones who had actually been on the field with him.

"How are you feeling?" Prentniss asked, looking like she wanted to hug him but knew to keep her distance.

"Okay." Reid shrugged. "I've been better."

"I really want to hug you but Hotch said no hugging so I wont." Garcia spoke up, bending her arms at the elbow and closing her hands, the way someone does when they're about to pick something up but at told at the last second no.

"Thanks." Reid tried to sit up a little more, but winced at he put pressure on his stitches.

"No, no, don't move." Garcia shook her head as soon as he winced. "You need to get better and you won't if you try to move."

"Know when you'll be able to get out of here?" JJ asked, arms crossed as they often were.

"Soon, I hope." Reid crossed his legs just to ease some of the stiffness. "I'm getting tired of staying in bed so much."

"Hotch just left to see when you can be released." Rossi said as he came in. "There are cases building up and the director is getting impatient."

"Well it's not like this wasn't a case. We're just closing it this time." JJ stated. "And a big case, at that."

Prentniss shrugged. "I was supposed to be on vacation. But we all know how those go."

The rest of the people in the room –minus Morgan, who was still sleeping- nodded, each remember a failure of a vacation from the past.

"What are you doing here, anyway? If you're supposed to be on vacation, shouldn't you be somewhere a bit more…pleasant?" Reid asked, looking at Prentniss curiously.

"Long story short, it was my plane that took down the unsubs who had you. I had worked that case a year or two ago and then it went cold. I saw the plane flying when no one else was supposed to be there, I knew you had been taken by the same unsubs I had been searching for, and took a guess. I think it was a pretty good guess."

"That's an understatement." Reid snorted. "I would've been dead by the time anyone found me. You saved my life."

"Part of my job." Prentniss shrugged. "It's not like you haven't saved our asses a few times too." She gestured to the others, who all nodded in agreement. Before Reid could answer, Hotch came in with Dr. Hurcomb.

"You can go home today." Dr. Hurcomb said, going over to remove the IV and wires. "Just take it easy for a while, alright? Those stitches need to stay in a little longer, so the less you move around, the better. You're legs are going to feel a little weak for a while, and you're going to get tired pretty quick. Make sure to be careful with what you eat, keep with stuff that's easy on your stomach. I gave your boss the instructions and appointment dates for you at the hospital closest to you."

He helped Reid sit up and move to the edge of the bed and looked around at the other people in the room. "If you could all leave the room for a few minutes?"

They all nodded and left the room, someone waking up Morgan on the way. Once they were all out the nurse pulled out the bag Hotch had given in. Inside was some clothes from Reid's go-bag which they had kept at the offices when they returned from Kansas. As much as Spencer would rather do it himself, he let the nurse help from change out of his hospital gown and into his own clothes. Thankfully, the clothes he had packed back when they were first called on the case were comfortable, unlike some of the things he would wear for work. They were loose enough to not put pressure on his stitches.

It seemed like everything was already ready to go by the time he was changed and the nurse helped him to his feet and make his way unsteadily towards the door. His legs were weaker from not being used, but it felt good to be walking again and not laying in bed. He pushed the door open and made his way out of the room, Dr. Hurcomb behind him. After a week of staying here, he would've thought it would take longer before he could leave. A few hours worth of paperwork at least. But he guess that's how New York worked. Everything was faster in New York except price drops.

"We're taking the jet back to the strip at Quantico." Hotch said, glancing at Reid. "You can take the train if you want."

"No, I'm okay." Reid insisted. In a way, he was testing himself. Would he be okay on a plane, or would he have a panic attack?

~A half hour later~

Spencer was okay on the plane. He was nervous and he refused to lay on the couch or close his eyes, but he was okay. He would slowly learn to relax again and the memories of what happened on the plane with Madame and Miss Rosie would fade away, at least for the most part.

As he was sitting there, lost in thought, box of cards was thrown on the table in front of him. He jumped, and looked up to see Prentniss who had decided to tag along for the flight just for the hell of it.

"In my travels I've learned a few new card games, if you're willing to play." She said, sliding in across from him. Morgan, who was next to Reid raised an eye brow.

"Games that Pretty Boy might not know?"

"Of course. Unless he actually took the time to learn all the card games there are." She said, opening the deck and shuffling. It was a new deck, the backs of the cards decorated with the Greek flag.

"It won't take me long to catch on." Reid stated. "I'll beat you in those too."

"Such a cocky personality you can have, Dr. Reid." Prentniss teased. "I think I actually might miss it."

For the first time in weeks, Spencer grinned.

 **I am not just going to forget Madame and Miss Rosie either, the results of their case will come in probably in the next chapter.**

 **No, this will not be a Reid/Prentniss story. I just found their friendship in series great. And yes, this was a more of a filler chapter. I have decided how this story will end. I'm thinking maybe 3 more chapters after this one maybe? I'm not sure.**

 **I do have the other story about Maeve and Reid, which is a series of one-shots which don't have to really be read in order because there's no real plot line.**

 **And I am planning another story, this one about another case by with no hostage-Reid cases. I'm still working on the plot, but you can watch for that one too. It'll probably be called**

" **Son of the Dark One".**


	10. Chapter 10

**This is the next to last chapter! I'm still kind of debating how exactly I want to end this story, but I'll figure it out. Normally I just go with the flow and whatever ends up happening is what I go with.**

Spencer returned to work very slowly. For the first week or so back in his apartment, he was still nauseous and sore. He found he would flinch whenever someone touched him, even so much as brushing against his shoulder as they passed. He didn't trust any women he hadn't known before the whole plane accident. He read in the paper that Madame was on death row for being responsible for the deaths of men in several countries. Miss Rosie was being imprisoned for life by plea of insanity. There was no mention of their successful kidnapping of an FBI agent, which was good. The last thing Reid wanted was for people to recognize him and ask him questions about what he had been through. He didn't want to talk about it to anyone.

When his stomach was settled enough for him to at without the chance of puking it back up, he returned to work, but wasn't allowed on the field yet because he was still healing from the surgery. So he worked from Quantico, filling out papers, helping the team over the phone, and working with Garcia (more like telling her what to look up and reading it over quickly to get the information to the team faster). Sometimes though, he would find himself zoning out, no longer able to focus on whatever was in front of him.

Garcia was the one who first noticed this, after having tried to get his attention for 5 minutes without an answer. She knew he was sometimes a bit slow to realize he was being spoken too whenever he was really focused on something, but he hadn't turned a page in the stack of papers he'd been reading for the whole time. He assured her he was fine, just trying to put together the pieces of whatever he read so it made more sense. Of course, Garcia wasn't entirely convinced and brought this up in conversation with Morgan later that day.

"I dunno, it was really weird." She told him. "I mean, I've seen him get distracted and I know he's fallen asleep a few times, but only during the paper work _after_ a long case or when he first came back after Maeve. But he's never been this out of it. I don't even think he was this out of it after he was shot in neck-"

"Baby girl, relax." Morgan interrupted her. "He's just getting back to work after a pretty traumatic experience. He's going to need some time to get back into the flow of things. Give him some time and he'll be back to sprouting out random facts that most people don't know and emptying the snack machine practically on his own."

"Okay, if you say so…" She didn't sound convinced, but they said their goodbyes and hung up, and she set back to work on looking up background information on suspects and baby animals.

Later on that week, the team was out on another case and Reid and Garcia were left in Quantico again, helping the team from home. The were close to closing the case, they just needed to find out where the unsub lives. Morgan called Garcia.

"Has Reid got the geographic profile up yet? He's not answering his phone again." Morgan asked. For the past few days Reid hadn't been answering his phone right away since the ringer was broken and he didn't always hear it. Every time he went to get it fixed, however, another case would come up or he would be too tired to go deal with it.

Garcia poked her head out of the door to look for him. "I believe he did, but he was doing the potty dance for the past half hour and since I don't see him, I'm assuming he gave in and scurried off to the little geniuses room." She said, and then smiled despite the fact the team couldn't see her. "And I was right. He's coming back out now."

Walking out of her office and down to where he was, she called out to him, "Reid, do you have the geographic profile yet?"

"Yeah." He nodded, but seemed distracted as he picked up the marker and circled in red the area the unsub would most likely be hiding. After rattling off the street names, the two waited for Morgan's reply.

"There is no Smith street here." He finally said. "And no Wetters road either."

Reid made a confused face. "Of course are."

"No, there aren't. Officers here say there's no such streets around here."

"But you're in Springfield-"

"Springfield? Kid, we're in Gladeville. There's no Springfield anywhere near us."

This just seemed to confuse Reid further. "I could've sworn you said Springfield-"

"Well, I didn't! Gladeville Kentucky, man, not Springfield! Never mind, we'll get a geographic profile going here." And then Morgan hung up. This case for some reason he seemed to take personally, and it was making him short tempered.

"How did I hear the wrong town?" Reid asked, hurrying over to his desk and flipping through the stack of files for the one on this case. He looked through the papers and sure enough, the town was Gladeville. Skimming the rest of his cases, none of them took place in Springfield. What had made him think Springfield?"

"Don't stress so much, it's not good for you." Garcia said. "Everyone makes mistakes sometimes-"

"I don't mess up on things like this. Gladeville doesn't sound anything like Springfield. They're not even close to each other!" Reid ran his fingers through his hair as he sat heavily in his chair. "I haven't been on any cases from any Springfield for a while, and there's several of them across the country. Why did I think they said that?"

"Calm down, they can't be mad at you-"

"The unsub could be hunting his next victim because I messed up the geographic-"

"Hey, boy genius! Look at me!" Garcia snapped. "Stop blaming yourself. You aren't the only one on the team to ever make a mistake. We all do it. It's human. Now lets go get ice cream from the vending machine-"

"I don't want any."

"You love ice cream."

"My stomach is already bothering me, dairy will only make it worse." Reid shook his head. "Coffee. I want coffee." He got up and made his way quickly to the coffee machine, pouring himself a cup and adding enough sugar to send a diabetic to the hospital. Garcia frowned. Something wasn't right with him, but no one else seemed to notice it but her.

The next few days passed without another incident like that happening, and Reid was finally allowed back on the field after getting his stitches removed and the doctor approving that he was okay to return the field. By now, he seemed much more comfortable around the girls of the team, but still he would jump whenever anyone touched him. He didn't like to be cornered, referring to sit on the isle seats if he sat around the table. But other than that, everything seemed normal. He was never left alone though, always having someone on the team with him since they were all afraid he would get kidnapped again. Of course, no one admitted to this.

As Morgan watched though, he began to notice little things about Spencer still seemed off. For one, he was rubbing his eyes a lot, as if he had a migraine, but he insisted he didn't. He would squint at things, as if he couldn't see them clearly and had taken to wearing his glasses again instead of the contacts. **(A/N: The Criminal Minds Wiki says he has eye cataracts in the first degree or something like that…? I'm just gonna play around with that for a bit)**

He would tilt his head every now and then as if he heard something, or he would stare at nothing for a while with a confused look. Then he would snap out of it and say something so Reid-like that everyone would seem to forget about it. It wasn't like he hadn't gotten distracted during other cases before.

He was in the car with Morgan and JJ when something happened that confused them both.

"I didn't say anything." Reid said out of no where from the backseat, looking confused himself.

"What? We didn't ask if you said anything." JJ rose an eye brow as she looked through the rearview mirror at him.

"You didn't?" Reid tilted his head. "Oh."

He said nothing else on the matter and refused to discuss it any further with anyone. JJ and Morgan knew exactly what was on Reid's mind now though, and they were both worried for him.

It wasn't until the next month though that the team was sure this was more than a phase. Morgan, Garcia, and JJ had all gone to Hotch and told them their fears.

"Something isn't right, Hotch. I thought he was past the age range for that to kick in though." Morgan said, shaking his head.

"He is. But there are exceptions to every rule, especially with mental health, and you all know that."

"But what do we do? We can't-"

He was interrupted by a sudden uproar outside the room. Rushing to the window of Hotch's office overlooking the bullpen he spotted several of the other agents with their hands up, a few with their guns drawn, all looking at one person who was aiming a gun at an empty chair. That one person was Reid, standing up and shaking like a leaf, face red, gun aimed at the back of an empty chair and his hand on the trigger. Everyone was afraid to move toward him, because he had backed himself into the corner of his desk so no one could get near him without coming from the front. Within a few seconds Hotch, JJ, Morgan, and Garcia were rushing out of the room.

"Reid, put the gun down!" Morgan called. "Put it down, there's no one there!"

"They're back. I thought- I read that they were going away." Reid shook his head. As they got closer they could see the far away look in his eyes. Whatever he was seeing, no on else could. "Shut up, shut up!" He yelled at the chair, pulling one hand away from the gun to scratch roughly at his head.

"There's nothing there, Spence, put the gun down." JJ said in a soothing voice, but Reid turned his gun to her, looking terrified.

"Stay away from me!" He shouted, trying to back up but only finding the desk behind him.

"Everyone put your guns away. JJ, Garcia, go into a different room." Hotch said quietly to the other agents in the room before turning to Reid. "Who's there, Spencer?"

"Everyone." Reid whimpered, scratching at his head still. He was leaving red marks on the side of his face. "Everyone. I thought they were locked away, Hotch, far away. Different states. Why are they all here?"

"I don't know. They can't hurt you though, Spencer, not if you put your gun down." Hotch continued in as calm and soothing of a voice as he could manage. Internally, he was scared. The Reid he was used to was timid with his gun, the least likely on the team to ever take a shot at someone. Obviously, Reid wasn't all there at the moment.

"But-" Reid looked confused. He went from scratching his head to rubbing his eyes. "But they're telling me if I put it down they'll attack…"

Hotch made eye contact with Morgan and flicked his eyes towards Reid. They had worked together long enough that Morgan knew exactly what Hotch wanted him to do and he nodded, slowly moving to the side.

"But the team is right here, Reid, they can't hurt you. Not when we're all right here." Hotch insisted. Reid's hands were shaking terribly. He didn't seem to be in control of himself at all. Morgan was at the desk behind Reid's and making his way around to the side. Hotch would just have to try to keep Reid focused on him.

"No, they don't care. They never did, Hotch, you remember. You were there, none of them ever cared." Reid's finger twitched on the trigger. "They're going to attack me again."

"No they won't. You're safe here, Spencer, there's no one who can hurt you here." Hotch tried to assure him. Morgan was at the edge of Reid's desk, but the younger agent didn't seem to notice. His eyes were fixed on the empty chair. Hotch gave a slight nod and Morgan pounced forward, wrapping his arms around Reid and forcing him to drop the gun. This sent Spencer into a near panic and he screamed and yelled for someone to help him, before breaking down into tears and going limp, sobs racking his body. Hotch had already called an ambulance.

 **At the hospital later that night…**

For safety reasons, they kept at least one of Spencer's arms restrained down, and the opposite leg so he couldn't fight his way out. After a few scans and tests and looking through his family's health records, the doctors were certain it was schizophrenia. At some point during the ride to the hospital, Reid had come back to reality, confused and not remembering anything about what had happened.

Now, he lay on the bed, half restrained with the rest of the team in the room with him. He would have to stay in the hospital until the rest of the tests came back, but he would most likely never be able to return to work.

"How do you feel?" Morgan asked, the last of the team to enter the room.

"In a way….relieved." Spencer answered after a few minutes, and looked up at Morgan. "I knew it would happen some day, I just didn't know when. Now that it happened….well, I don't have to be afraid of it happening anymore. I'm just glad it happened before I could've hurt someone."

The team felt their hearts break a little at that. How horrible must it have been for him, knowing th chances of him developing schizophrenia and knowing the history of mental illness in his family, going through every day knowing he might possibly have a mental break? Knowing that he might one day end up like the unsubs he spent the past 10 or so years tracking down?

No one was sure how to respond to that, and no one trusted their voices to actually speak. They had thought that when Prentniss had first found Reid on the plane that their youngest member, the baby of the team, would be dead. Then they got him back for a few short weeks, only to lose a part of him again. But in a way, they had all had the thoughts pass their minds that the only things that would end Reid's service to the BAU would be death or schizophrenia. So in a way, it was almost a relief to them too. Chances are, Reid would be put in an institution because of his actions in the office with the gun would label him as violent. They wouldn't have to worry about him being killed on the field or deal with any more close calls. They wouldn't have to worry about him having a mental breakdown during a case. The suspense was over.

 **One more chapter after this one, and then it's over. =(**

 **I'm going to try to update What If soon, and then work on my other fanfiction for Infernal Devices books, finish reading the Harry Potter series (I know, I'm a little late with those…lol)) and maybe write a fanfiction for those, and then continue reading my WW2 books and try to finish moving into the new house and getting a barn built. Of course, books and horses come first. ;)**


	11. Chapter 11

**This is last chapter of Gender Game. Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed!**

 **I do have another story for Criminal Minds, a much lighter one called What If, which is a collection of one-shots centering about Reid and Maeve if Maeve hadn't been killed.**

 **I'm also thinking of starting another fanfiction without Reid getting kidnapped and tortured, where unsub is a teenage boy. I dunno. I'm getting a bit side tracked with reading Harry Potter (I'm only what, 10 years behind? I did the same thing with Pirates of the Caribbean. Didn't watch them until last year, and I'm about to be in my senior year of high school. Shame on me for missing out on the Pirate phase =/**

 ** _**** PARTS OF THIS CHAPTER MAY BE GOREY AND DISTURBING ***_**

 _Three months later…_

Reid had been admitted into an institution the same week he had his mental break in Quantico. They had wanted to put him in the same one as his mother, but he said he didn't want to go there because she would blame herself and he didn't want her to see him like this. He said he would try to go visit her later, maybe when he was a little more mentally stable. Unfortunately, a month after he was admitted, his mother had a fatal heart attack. She died before the doctors could do anything for her. Telling Spencer that his mother had died and watching how his expression changed from confused to absolutely heartbroken had been brutal. Hotch had been the one who told him, and he still couldn't forget the look on Reid's face.

Now, three months after being admitted, Morgan had come to visit. He stood in the doorway by the nurse's station, looking over to the couch where he could see Spencer reading some large book, as he always used to do on the very rare occasions the team would have a slow day at work.

"How's he doing?" Morgan asked the nurse at the counter.

The nurse sighed. "He's struggling, to be honest. He doesn't respond to the medication as well as his mother did. His breaks from reality are becoming more frequent and lasting longer. His eye sight is failing very fast. When we notice him rubbing his eyes, we get him an audio book to listen to instead of reading one. He doesn't talk very much any more either, but for the most part, he's still very peaceful. He doesn't fight when it's time for his medications and he eats regular meals with the rest of the patients. He likes to look at the old cases he worked on. He had the bigger blonde girl bring him copies of them. He hasn't gotten physical in a while, not since the first two weeks he was here. Even if the meds don't stop the voices and hallucinations, they do mellow him down."

The first two weeks had been rough. Spencer had become violent whenever he would have an episode, and many times security had to be called to hold him down. He would snap of it and repeatedly apologize. He claimed he would see people trying to hurt him and then he would panic. As time went on though, his body seemed to deteriorate. Doctors had run a few other tests, but couldn't find anything else wrong. The therapist said it was most likely anxiety and stress that were making him lose weight and causing his eyesight to go so fast. Morgan and the rest of the team could only sit back and watch while their youngest member slowly wasted away. They hoped that once the doctors find the right dosage of medication, Reid would even out and be okay.

"Has he had any episodes today?" Morgan asked. It was something he asked every time, with the false hope that a day would come when he wouldn't have an episode and everything would work out and he would be back on the field with the rest of the team, spouting out facts and reciting parts of books.

"Yes, several already actually. He's in one now too." The nurse was watching Reid, who had gone stone still and was staring at the wall. There was a blank expression on the part of his face that Morgan to see, and it hurt to see him like that. His phone dinging, he sighed and checked it to find that it was Garcia calling him in for a case. Sighing, he handed a paper bag to the nurse.

"It's his favorite candy. It's almost Halloween. Used to be the kid's favorite holiday." He said, before turning and leaving. His eyes stung.

 **Later that night….**

 **Reid's POV**

Reid was sitting up in his bed, staring at his hands. They were stained with ink from the sharpies and pens. Since 7:00, he had been writing. Writing everything the voices said, writing whatever quotes and ideas happened to pop up in his head. It was now 3:00am, his hands were blistered and bleeding. But he wasn't done writing. There was still so much to write, so much the voices were telling him. So many voices yelling at him all at once. He stood back up and grabbed his sharpie and returned to writing, but it was out of ink. He started to breathe heavily, panicking. How could he write without a marker? He had already used all his pens and this was his last sharpie.

Then his mind went back to a strange case they had worked. The man had loved art. Where did that case take place? He couldn't remember. But the art had been horribly beautiful, he remembered that. Yes, that would be perfect! Why hadn't he thought of that before! He scrambled to the floor to grab a pen, and then he pulled his arm back and brought it down hard, jabbing the pen into his leg. Blood welled up around it and he grinned, pulling the pen out and continuing to write. When the bleeding stopped, he didn't notice how dizzy he felt. He didn't notice the weak feeling. He moved to the other leg, doing the same thing. He switched to dipping the sharpie into the blood instead of the pen. It was easier to write with it.

Around 7:00am, his broken mind caught up with the rest of his body. Blood was running down his legs from several puncture wounds, and it ran down his arms from the holes he made in his shoulders, and then he collapsed, blood loss taking its toll.

 **Hotch's POV, 10am**

When Hotch had gotten the call, he wanted to drop everything and hurry back to DC. But there was nothing he could do anyway, so he forced himself to stay. They would close the case today, he knew. It was a simple textbook case, an easy one. He didn't tell the team about the call, and he wouldn't until he got on the plane. As much as he wanted to hurry back, he didn't want to. Telling the team would mean it really happened.

 **On the plane that evening…**

"I got a call this morning." Hotch said, his voice quieting the others and making their smiling faces become series as they turned to him.

"Another case?" Rossi asked.

"I wish." Hotch sighed. "It was about Reid." He wasn't sure how to tell the team. He didn't want to watch their faces, but he knew there was no avoiding it.

"What happened?" Morgan demanded when Hotch had hesitated.

"They found him lying on his floor at 7:30 this morning. He was covered in blood, and they hadn't gotten to him in time. When they found him, he was taking his final breaths."

Shocked expressions covered the faces of the whole team.

"He's….dead?" JJ asked breathlessly, looking like a little girl who was just told the baby bird they had tried to save had died overnight.

"Was he murdered? Why didn't you tell us sooner-"

"It was suicide." Hotch interrupted Morgan. "Spencer had been writing on the walls in his own blood. They found the pen he used to stab himself and the marker he was using to write with the blood. Reading that he wrote, they think he was having a very bad mental breakdown. He had his copies of the cases he worked laying on his bed, and he seemed to be writing about guilt about things he did, questioning their punishments and their motives-" He broke off, trying to clear his head. "He was sick." He couldn't make his voice much louder than a whisper and he could feel his eyes stinging. JJ was the first to burst into tears. Morgan punched one of the empty seats, tears streaming down his face. Rossi was trying to comfort Kate while fighting tears himself. Hotch closed his eyes and felt the warm tears run down his own face. And he still needed to tell Garcia when they got back. He didn't want to call her with news like that.

 **The next day….**

Telling Garcia had been as hard as he expected it to be, and he was sure this part was going to be just as hard. Him and the rest of the team were going to the scene of Reid's death to determine that was in fact a suicide and not foul play. They were lead up to the room, which had been left untouched for them to see. And inside was a terrible sight.

The writing on the walls started from as high as Reid could've reached and went down to the floor. It started off as pen, then got thicker and darker he switched to sharpie. Once the sharpie stopped, it turned to blood. On the floor were spots of blood where he must've stood to write. After a few feet the writing became a little fainter, the writing sloppier and harder to read, slanting downwards until they trailed off into nothing but a bloody stain on the floor. The words were a mix of math problems, chemistry formulas, quotes from books or case files. On the bed a few files were open. The L.D.S.K file, Reid's first kill; the Zugszwang case, when he saw Maeve for the first time and lost her the same day; the case in Texas when he was shot in the neck. All the cases that had a physical or mental effect on him were open. The other case files he had were organized neatly in a box sitting on his bed.

No one in the room said anything. The story was clear as day. At some point in the night, Reid had gone through a very bad schizophrenic break and possibly tried to write down what the voices were telling him. It was written in an unorganized matter, and it was easy to see that in his delusions, once he ran out of ink in the marker something made him think to stab his leg and write with blood. It was almost like the case they worked where the unsub was painting in humans' blood. That case must've been on his mind when he stabbing himself.

"Where the hell were the nurses?!" Morgan broke the silence. "Shouldn't there be a nurse doing night checks on this place!?"

"There should be." Hotch agreed. "And I'll be talking to them about that."

With that, Hotch left the room to go find the manager. The rest of the team sighed and looked around the room before turning and walking out after Hotch.

That night, the team all went out the local bar, and each had a glass of Reid's favorite drink. They talked and laughed about their favorite memories of him, the happier ones that took place between cases. When the funeral and wake came up, they were shocked by the number of people who came. The woman whose baby Spencer had delivered during a case, the man who was almost killed by the girl who was obsessed with Cinderella, old friends from his days in high school and college and even a few people from casinos. One man claimed he banned Reid from the casino because he won too much and people were leaving, thinking it was rigged. Old teachers who had said that they had never had a student like him, teachers who knew he would get far. The nurses from his mother's institute who were always there when we would visit came too. Several people from the different cases all across the country who Reid had either comforted or directly helped save them were there. Old team members, going as far back as Elle. Prentiss and Blake showed up as well. It was an amazing thing to see how many lives a single man could touch.

Even Reid's father showed up, looking much worse than he had when Morgan and Rossi had helped Reid solved that case from his childhood. Apparently the loss of Dianne only a few months apart of Spencer's had really taken it's toll on him. He said how much he regretted not trying to spend more time with Spencer and not trying to be in his life as much as he should've. He talked about how proud he was of his son, of how many people he had helped and how many murders he had helped stop, how smart he was and everything he accomplished.

Then someone came up who no one knew. An woman about the same age as Spencer was, with red-ish brown hair.

"We only spoke twice, the first time when he warned me about a serial killer who was taking people from bars. I used to be a bartender. He inspired me to leave the bartending job, and try for something else. I told him I tried to become a magician, but what I really did was go back to school, get my degree, and become a guidance counselor at the local high school. I coach the girls' soccer team and I go to different schools and talk to the senior classes and encourage them to go to college and get degrees and do some magic, because no matter what job you get, you're helping someone. Even if you aren't chasing killers, everyone has the ability to save a life or make someone smile. That's something they don't teach in school."

 _"_ _I don't believe in pressure, fear, or failure. Just smiles, monsters, and magic."_

 _~Matthew Gray Gubler_

 **Ta-da! The end! That was a slightly bitter sweet ending. Remember the bar tender from that episode when Morgan showed Reid how to pick up girls? In all honestly, I shipped Reid and the bartender for quite a while. I mean really, the nerdy, awkward, super smart kid from Vegas dating a bartender is just a fun thought.**

 ** _To tie up a few loose ends-_**

 **The institute we're going to say was shut down due to several safety violations that were covered up by the nurses paying off the inspectors before Reid had been emitted.**

 **Madame and Miss Rosie were both arrested, Madame trying to force her views on the other inmates and in the process, getting herself killed for being the "weakest" one in the prison, too proper. Miss Rosie was in a different center receiving therapy for her mental health and getting surgery to remove her birth defects.**

 **The team moved on, though they never did find a member as smart and loyal as Reid, and they each continued to visit his grave over the years, to talk about cases out loud and problems. Sometimes imagining Reid's responses to things helped them fix their personal problems and find solutions during cases.**


End file.
